Free Hit List by Lawrence Block

connected guy, has a couple of no-neck bodyguards with him night and day, and I can go home.”
    “He’s an artist.”
    “At what, mayhem? Extortion?”
    “At art,” she said. “He paints pictures.”
    “No kidding.”
    “He’s got a show coming up. In Chelsea.”
    “I heard there were galleries opening over there. Way west, by the river. Is that where he lives?”
    “Uh-uh. Williamsburg.”
    “That’s in Brooklyn.”
    “So?”
    “Practically another city.”
    “What are you doing, Keller? Talking yourself into something?”
    He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “The thing is, Dot, it’s been a while.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “And the last one, that business in Louisville . . .”
    “Not a walk in the park, as I recall.”
    “It actually went pretty smoothly,” he said, “when you look back on it, but it didn’t seem so smooth while it was going on. We got paid and everybody was happy, but even so it left a bad taste.”
    “So you’d like to rinse your mouth out?”
    “Is there a lot of fine print in the contract, Dot? Does it have to look like a heart attack or an accident?”
    She shook her head. “Homicide’s fine, and as noisy as you want it.”
    “Oh?”
    “So I’m told. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be, unless it’s an object lesson for a player to be named later, but if you can arrange for the guy to get decapitated at high noon in Macy’s window, nobody would be the least bit upset.”
    “Except for the artist.”
    “Keller,” she said, “you can’t please everybody. What do you think? You want to do this?”
    “I could use the money.”
    “Well, who couldn’t? The first payment’s on its way, because I said yes first and then looked for someone to do it. I don’t have to tell you how I hate to send money back once I have it in hand.”
    “Not your favorite thing.”
    “I get attached to it,” she said, “and I think of it as my money, so returning it feels like spending it, and without getting anything for it. Do you want a day or two to think about this?”
    He shook his head. “I’m in.”
    “Really? Brooklyn or no, it’s still New York. He’s in Williamsburg, you’re on First Avenue, you can just about see his house from your window.”
    “Not really.”
    “All the same . . .”
    “It won’t be the first time in New York, Dot. Never on a job, but personal business, and what’s the difference?” He straightened up in his chair. “I’m in,” he said. “Now tell me about the guy.”
    “I used to paint,” Maggie Griscomb said. “Now I make jewelry.”
    “I was noticing your earrings.”
    “These? They’re my work. I only wear my own pieces, because that way I get to be a walking showcase. Unless I’m sitting down, in which case I’m a sitting showcase.”
    They were sitting now, in a booth at a Cuban coffee shop on Eighth Avenue, drinking café con leche.
    “It’s odd,” she said, “because I like jewelry, and not just my own. I buy other people’s jewelry and it just sits in the drawer.”
    “How come you stopped painting?”
    “I stopped being twenty-nine.”
    “I didn’t know there was an age limit.”
    “I spent my twenties painting moody abstract oils and sleeping with strangers,” she said. “I figure my twenties lasted until my thirty-fourth birthday, when I got out of some guy’s bed, threw up in his bathroom, and tried to get out of there without looking at him or the mirror. It struck me that I was older than Jesus Christ, and it was time to quit being twenty-nine and grow up. I looked at all my paintings and I thought, Jesus, what crap. Nobody ever bought any of them. Nobody even went so far as to admire them, unless it was some guy desperate to get laid. A horny man will pretend an enthusiasm for just about anything. But aside from that, about the best most people would do was say my work was interesting. Listen, I’ve got a tip for you. Don’t ever tell an artist his work is interesting.”
    “I